ABSTRACT

Every day, people around the world who are at work and play enjoy the use of products, buildings and services. Much of the human experience each day relies on items that were made to extend human abilities and to overcome human limits. The sum of all the products, services, environments and systems that humans have produced comprises the operational environment (OE). The inner environment of the individual is separate and apart from the rest of physical existence that comprises the outside environment. ‘This artificial world’, psychologist and computer scientist Herbert Simon (1998:113) contends, ‘is centered precisely on this interface between the inner and outer environments; it is concerned with attaining goals by adapting the former to the latter.’